Palace Burning
by stellae-lux
Summary: James T. Kirk is a man made of trauma and secrets, standing on the edge of something important. He's a puzzle, a riddle, and Spock has never been able to leave a riddle unsolved.
1. Prologue

A/N: Alright here we are at the start of something. Welcome to Palace Burning. This is a lengthy fic, most of which is not written, and I do not have an update schedule at the moment (sorry kids, but I'm a full time fourth year student and I have a play that's about to open on Wednesday). I would love to have the whole thing done by spring though, which would see updates going up _fairly_ regularly.

I also have another story that's almost finished which will start going up soon. It might be called Down the Mountainside (Edit: Just kidding it's called Gods of Rome). We'll see when we get there. But if you're bored of waiting for me to update this you could always go check that out. It's definitely a fluffier piece and an easier read. I mean, it's not completely devoid of angst because that's not who I am, but definitely not Palace Burning level.

Before we start, I also want to acknowledge that this has been influenced largely by Pericles, Prince of Tyre, the play written at least in part by William Shakespeare. I definitely also shamelessly stole the title from it. If you don't want spoilers, maybe don't go look at it, but it is a phenomenal play. Yes, Jim is definitely reminiscent of poor Pericles. It's also very likely that the writings of Distractedkat (Angel Baby 1 on ff) have influenced me in some way because her Spirk is flawless and I've read her fics a number of times. I don't know if that will come through in style or anything, but regardless she's amazing. Please go read her stories. They are much better.

EDIT: Hey, sorry guys, it turns out fanfiction decided to just ignore my formatting but I think I've fixed it now. Sorry if this pops up in your notifications as a new chapter (but if I keep going at this pace I should have another one up by the end of the week). Thanks all!

Without further ado, here's Palace Burning. I hope you enjoy.

* * *

Prologue

James Tyson felt nothing but the vibration of the engine beneath him, working harder than it should, and the dust hitting his face. He did not feel the ghost of a blaster shot ringing beside him, did not feel his finger on a trigger, and he certainly did not feel the 11 metres that had separated him from the only thing that he had ever wanted. Nothing but engines and dust. And if one of the side effects of dust in the face happened to be that he had an urge to swerve into the oncoming traffic, well, that was a matter out of his hands.

He couldn't drive fast enough. The world was blurring and if he had been any other biker on any other night he would have been pulled off the road a dozen times by different forms of police, but as it was he held a few privileges un-thought of by the average Dick and Harry that travelled down these country roads.

His wrist buzzed – or rather, the communicator on his wrist buzzed – once. Only once. He didn't need to look down at it to know that there was a little green checkmark, a reward for a mission gone right.

He wanted to vomit.

Instead, he veered right and put his foot down, a blast of reckless energy to rival early day space travelers. His speed what it was, it didn't take long to get where he needed to go, and he leaned the bike against the old brick building, his head still spinning from the sudden lack of momentum. He managed not to retch and instead looked around at the sickeningly familiar surroundings. Alone in the alley he spread his arms wide into a stretch and grimaced, though even he couldn't tell if it was at the stiffness in his shoulders or the familiar setting. Home sweet home. For a moment he considered getting right back on his bike and speeding off North, off to where he was supposed to be heading, but pushed it down. He couldn't handle them right now. Instead, he slipped around to the front of the building and passed through the doors and under the old neon sign that read _Riverside Brewery est. 2018_.

The bar hadn't changed since he'd last been inside it, and he doubted it had changed much since 2018, its interior styled in a way that had gone out of fashion twice before the genetics war, and once more after, before coming back in recently as 'antique.' Not that anyone would ever add the vomit-coated hovel onto a recommendation list for antique-seeking travelers.

James slid into a barstool between two jackasses, putting an end to their testosterone-fueled argument and sending them back to drinking on their own. Taking only slight notice, he signaled at the bartender for a few drinks.

"New in town?" The man asked heartily, not put off by the veritable dark cloud surrounding the man.

James let out a bitter laugh. "No, no. Just back after a long while."

The bartender nodded sagely, handing the man to Jim's right a glass of some amber liquid. "I was going to say, sir, that you look mighty familiar. What's your name?"

Already caught off balance by the familiar surroundings, the 'sir' pushed him just over the edge and he answered without really thinking. "James T."

The bartender took a step back suddenly. "Well I'll be. If it isn't George Kirk's son. Good to see ya Jim."

And just like that all formality – along with any chance of anonymity – flew out the window. Not that he particularly cared.

"Good to see you, too, Greg." He smiled at the old classmate. He'd once broken the man's nose in a fight. It was payback for the time that he had shattered Jim's wrist.

Greg slid a dark glass up to him and a placed a shot of something toxically yellow next to it. "On the house. For an old friend." He winked.

James – Jim – smiled at him and used the time it took to take a sip of the drink to consider this man as an option. Greg had certainly grown up well, tall and muscular and tattooed in a way that only a bartender ever tended to be. Maybe, he decided, putting the glass back down. "Ah. Nothing like that home-grown Riverside hooch to get you started. You might as well start a tab for me, though." He added quickly. "I've got a feeling I'm going to be here a while."

"Will do." Greg smiled and then disappeared, off to serve the rest of the demanding crowd.

Jim took another long slow drink of the hooch before downing the shot. It tingled more than burned but that was the idea. What he wouldn't give for some Saurian Brandy. Or Romulan Ale for that matter. But while they might not shy away from serving the illegal here, they weren't quite far enough up the proverbial bar food-chain to get the good stuff.

Shaking his head, he downed the rest of the hooch and signalled for another one with a wave and a wink, ignoring the buzzing on his wrist as the full report came in. It was going to be a long night.

* * *

He had been so close, inches away, in fact, to leaving the bar with a pretty girl, a genius, and heading off to a night of pleasantries with someone he would never have to see again. Hell, he would have been happy to have gone home with Greg. He was leaving in the morning anyway; who knew when he'd be back here? He had been so close to getting out a bar without a fight.

And then that jackass Cupcake had to come and ruin the whole entire thing.

And here he was, fighting. One of the goons was angling a punch at him from the side, where he thought he wouldn't be seen. Jim thought about blocking it, thought about ducking and letting him punch the guy on the other side of him. He didn't, though. He let it hit him, revelling in the feeling of his skin breaking, in the faint scent of iron as his blood hit the warm bar air. He blocked a few shots, the ones that were headed areas where they might actually do some damage, redirected one so it would hit him in the shoulder exactly where he wanted to feel it, but mostly he let them hit him so that when the whistle sounded and the crowd cleared, leaving him lying on the table, he was made entirely of alcohol and adrenaline and sweet, sweet pain.

He didn't want to get cleaned up, either. Didn't want to be handed water or tissues. What he wanted was to lie there in his pain, grieving, in his own way, the loss of life the day had brought, the lost chance, and punishing himself for everything he had done wrong. He wrapped himself in his ball of self-loathing like it was a blanket and sat there in his chair across from a man who looked so pristine he shouldn't have even been looking at a person like Jim, and especially not like he might be something.

"You know, I couldn't believe it when the bartender told me who you were."

Jim laughed, maybe a bit hysterically; he was going to have to call this in. They wouldn't be pleased. "And who am I, Captain Pike?"

"Your father's son." Was the even reply.

Fuck.

"Can I get another one?" He yelled back to Greg, more to stall for time than anything else. The man looked at him like someone who knew him (which, Jim supposed, he did) and rolled his eyes. That opportunity was, apparently, no longer available. And neither was the alcohol.

"For my dissertation I was assigned the USS Kelvin. That was something I admired about your dad; he didn't believe in no-win scenarios."

"He sure learned his lesson."

"Well that depends on how you define winning. You're here aren't you?"

The man had a way of speaking matter-of-factly, such that every statement that came out of his mouth was indisputable, logical, completely and irrevocably true. With a voice like that he probably could have taken down the Federation if he had tried, or at least had a fairly decent career in the holos. Nevertheless, here he was, talking to Jim. About his father of all things.

And Jim wanted to know about his father, wanted to hear about it from a man who had known him, even second-hand, who had read more firsthand accounts of George Kirk's life than he could ever have dreamed. Jim found himself, almost against his will, hanging on his every word.

But still, he knew that his own existence was in no way a win, no way a success that his father should be proud of. The events of his life could be filed cleanly into the category of shit-that-no-one-with-a-shred-of-decency-would-survive, and far away from any category of events that a sane person would keep volunteering themselves for. George Kirk had nothing to show for his sacrifice except a widow whose mind was lost to grief and her two sons. Well, presumably two; no one had heard from Sam for years, not since Jim was last in Iowa. And the other…George had nothing to be proud of.

"Thanks."

"You know that instinct to leap without looking that was his nature too and in my opinion something Starfleet's lost." Pike continued, unswerving despite Jim's best efforts to brush him off.

"Why are you talking to me, man?"

"Because I looked up your file while you were drooling on the floor."

Not the real one, Jim thought petulantly.

"Your aptitude tests are off the charts, so what is it? You like being the only genius-level offender in the Midwest?"

"Maybe I love it."

He was starting to get frustrated. Why wouldn't he just go away? He was tempted to do something to make him leave, but knew that anything he did would be traced back to his real name, his real identity, and that was something he couldn't risk.

"So your dad dies, you can settle for a less than ordinary life. But you feel like you were meant for something better. Something special."

He had him there. Not that he would tell the man that. Still, wasn't he already special enough?

He thought of the green light that had buzzed on his wrist, the smell of air charged with phaser fire, and had to fight the urge to vomit again.

"Enlist in Starfleet."

Jim was jerked out of his thoughts with the sharp pang of panic, something he hadn't felt in a long time. That adrenaline tasted different form the adrenaline he'd so carefully cultivated for himself in the bar fight.

"Enlist?" He laughed at the ridiculousness of the offer – he couldn't help it. Enlist. He couldn't enlist, not if he wanted to! "You guys must be way down on your recruiting quota for the month if –"

"If you are half the man your father was, Jim," Captain Pike interrupted, as insistent and infuriatingly patient as ever. "Starfleet could use you. You could be an officer in four years, you could have your own ship in eight. You understand what the federation is, don't you? It's important. It's a peace-keeping and humanitarian armada –"

"Are you done?" Jim was finished. Tired. Why had he stopped here in the first place? He couldn't remember. All he wanted was out.

"I'm done." Pike acquiesced, maybe picking up on the finality in Jim's tone. He stood up, tossed a few credits on the table, and then looked back at the blond man. "Riverside shipyard. The shuttle for new recruits leaves tomorrow, 0800."

Jim waved him away and downed the water in his glass, preparing to get back on his bike and let it cruise on autopilot until he was far, far away.

When he lowered the glass, he was surprised to see Pike still standing there, almost hesitating, almost unsure but not quite. Something in the man's face hardened, but in a way that made it seem deeper, more thoughtful, not less penetrable but like there was more underneath the surface than Jim could ever guess.

"You know, your father was captain of a starship for twelve minutes." He said carefully, eyes burning into Jim's. "He saved 800 lives, including your mother's. And yours. I dare you to do better."

And with that he turned and walked out, leaving Jim to slump down in his chair and regret fiercely, though regret what he couldn't quite tell. He just wanted something to take the taste out. Preferably something that burned.

Instead of calling to the bar to see if Greg would hand his sorry ass one more drink before kicking him out, which he was enormously tempted to do, he picked up the starship-shaped salt shaker and examined it. It was an exact replica of the one they were building in the shipyard, the pride of Riverside. They had even made national news for being the location of the new flagship's construction. It would be nice, he thought, to fly inside something that looked like this, to learn its ins and outs, to see things that most of the earth-bound population could only imagine (not that that particular aspect would be new, perhaps just associated with less blood).

He let out a sound that bordered between a sigh and groan and pushed himself up from the table, ignoring his protesting muscles and what was likely a broken collarbone and strode outside after a few words with Greg.

"Hey, keep in touch okay?" The man had said. "I'll let you know when the next class reunion is. Everyone would love to see you."

The words were meant kindly but they stung, each one sinking tiny barbs into his skin.

"Yeah man, I'll do that." He promised. They both knew he was lying, but Greg smiled and clapped him on the back before going back to his sweeping.

Or maybe, Jim thought as he strode out of the building and made his way back towards his bike, he didn't know. Maybe he really thought Jim was going to keep in touch, and was happy about it.

Man, he had forgotten how bad Riverside Hooch messed with your brain.

He felt gray and empty, as though the colour of the world had been drained along with his energy, along with every shot he had taken over the course of the night. He wanted to crawl into a warm bed somewhere and succumb to unconsciousness. The last thing he wanted to do was report the events of the night.

With a burdened sigh, for the benefit of no one but himself in the dark alleyway, he flipped on the tiny comm on his wrist and began speaking into it, harsh and clinical, relaying a blow-by-blow of the last few hours – that he had been recognized, that Admiral Pike had sought him out and asked him to enlist in Starfleet. He did not mention the bar fight. Nor did he mention that he had introduced himself to the bartender in a way that gave him away, even if it was technically still in line with his alias.

He hit send and mounted his bike. He was just revving the engine to go when his wrist buzzed again.

If he was puzzled by the immediate response his report had warranted, it was nothing compared to the shock of reading the message that it indicated.

 _You are required in the stated location._

 _Report to Riverside Shipyard 0800 and enlist._

He swore loudly, and then immediately sent another voice message. "If I may," he began, gritting through the formality. "I have been recognized. I cannot go under the name of Tyson. Admiral Pike knows who I am."

He sent it just at that, unable to think of anything else to say that wouldn't have gotten him killed.

The response was just as fast the second time.

 _You have a unique advantage in this location._

They didn't have to say that it was because of his father. He knew. Oh he _knew._

He was just about to spit off a response that would regret by daybreak when another buzz came through.

 _You will have unique access to Federation files._

"Understood."

If anyone had stumbled into the alley at that particular moment they would have witnessed a man made of fire and ice and rage snap into a calm so pure and controlled and immediate it was as if he had never tasted emotion in the first place. They would have seen a dangerous glint in a stranger's eyes, one that proceeds sprints across streets and calls to emergency services.

As it was, no one stumbled into the alley way, and so the world went on blissfully unaware of forces that could change a man so suddenly, and Jim was allowed to mount his bike and set off at a reckless speed down the spider web of nearby highways where he could spend the next few hours, his last truly free hours for who knows how long, driving.

He kicked it into high gear and flew away until the town was behind him, the shipyard just a dot on the horizon, until all that existed were wheat fields to his left, canola to his right, and the ever lightning sky on the horizon.

He couldn't drive fast enough.


	2. Chapter 1

A/N: TW for abuse. I didn't get graphic or specific, but it's definitely there. Please take care of yourselves.

* * *

It started with Frank.

Jim was running, pumping his arms hard and letting his heart beat so hard that he thought it might burst through his chest, adrenaline pouring through his veins. He ducked behind the barn and ran through the field, dodging cows and sliding under Bessie when she wouldn't move and then tore across the ground. Hopping the fence, he could see Sam, running ahead of him over behind the next hill. He thought he was going to get away, but while Sam was bigger, Jim was still faster, so he turned up the dial inside of him, letting out a wild laugh as he tore across fields. It didn't take long once he turned up the speed, and he caught up with Sam at the edge of the forest, launching himself into the air so that for a moment he flew until he crashed into the bigger boy and sent them both tumbling into a hay bale that had, thankfully, had the ropes cut.

"Shit, Jimmy!" Sam laughed, and Jim couldn't help laughing too, even as he tried to find his way out of the dark scratchiness he was buried in.

Suddenly a hand grabbed his arm and pulled up and then he was in the bright sunlight again. He laughed and shook his head, trying to dislodge the remaining hay. Sam reached over and pulled a piece off of his face and Jim realized that it had been partly blocking his right eye.

"Got you." He said when he caught his breath.

"You sure did, Jimmy. Damn you're fast."

"I sure am." Jim followed his brother's lead and began to extract himself from the hay pile, which no longer resembled a bale in the slightest, but just a large mess. Thomas wasn't going to be happy about that. Jim's brain started a background program where he tried to think of an appropriate lie to tell the farmhand even as he jogged around his big brother, looking up at him with all the love he felt.

Sam looked down at him and ruffled his hair.

Jim closed his eyes and enjoyed the sensation. He had the best big brother of all time and that was a fact. And he would fight anyone who said something bad about Sam – he had, in fact. Just like Sam would fight anyone for him.

The sensation stopped suddenly, and Jim's eyes snapped open. He opened his mouth to protest before he saw where Sam was looking. Back at the farmhouse, a figure was waving, big and noticeable even from their distance. Beside it stood another figure.

"Who does mom have with her?" He asked instead, his protests forgotten.

"I don't know, Jim." Sam said, and there was something in his voice, a tightness of some kind, that hadn't been there before.

He didn't like that tightness, wanted to fix it, so he offered the only solution he could think of. "Well then we better go find out! Wanna race?"

Sam's laugh made Jim feel better, even if his shoulders were still tense and his smile didn't quite light his eyes like it usually did. "Sure kiddo. Like we don't already know you're going to win."

"I'll give you a head start!" He offered.

"Alright kid, count to ten and then run after me." Sam said, and then he took off.

Jim watched him with a frown. He wasn't running full tilt yet. Something was off. Was it one of those adult things that everyone said that he was too young for? Was Sam old enough for some of that now? Maybe he was. But that was okay, he would probably try to explain it if he could.

Jim kicked a rock a few feet in front of him and then walked up to it and kicked again. The third time he approached it, he pocketed it to add it to the collection on his windowsill.

Glancing back at Sam he decided that it had probably been ten seconds and he took off, legs flying, heart racing, arms pumping hard. The world dissolved until there was nothing but the steady thump of his bare feet hitting the packed dirt. He overtook Sam in seconds, reaching the house in a minute. He slid to a stop in front of his mother, panting and grinning.

"Hi mom!"

"James." Her voice was hard, but that didn't seem particularly unusual, so Jim turned to examine the man standing beside her. He was tall and dark and strong. Was he another farmhand? But he was too clean for that.

By the time Sam slid to a stop next to him, doubling over with exhaustion, Jim had worked it out, and he glared at his mother with a fury he hadn't felt since the boys at school had started insulting Sam.

It didn't take Sam long to catch up. "You must be Frank." He said, voice edged dangerously.

Jim whipped around to look at him – he knew about this?

The man smiled, a slow, sprawling smile. "That I am." His accent drawled lazily, and Jim hated him immediately.

"Sam, James, I want you to meet your new father."

"What?" Jim couldn't stop himself, and he saw the flash of steel that lit up the man's eyes for a moment.

"You heard me, James." She snapped.

A flash caught his attention, and then he noticed the ring on her finger. It was new, shining and brilliant, and a total betrayal.

He pushed past them and locked himself in his bedroom and sat against the door, curled up into a little ball like he could make himself disappear if he tried hard enough. That was where he woke up the next morning, Sam waiting for him at the door so that they could face their new reality together.

It took exactly one month for Winona Kirk – now Winona Carter – to take a commission and disappear into the black.

Jim would have given anything to be back at their grandfather's house, like they used to do whenever Winona left, rather than with this man who pinched his leg as hard as he could under the dinner table every night.

But that was only the beginning. It escalated quickly – first a slap across the face, then a punch, and then, within a month, he was being thrown across the room. At first, Sam tried to get involved, then he just stood back and watched, until finally he disappeared into his room. Jim screamed for his brother until his voice was raw, but Sam never came to save him. Eventually he stopped screaming. But he never stopped fighting back.

Instead, he learned to bite whenever he had the chance, learned where to kick that might make Frank let go of him – if he could get out of the house and run, he could get away for the night and shiver in a hay bale somewhere until morning came and he could slip back into the house. Usually by morning, Frank had cooled off, or had drunk himself into a stupor, and would forget that he had meant to kill his stepson. He also learned to hoard food, to slip downstairs in the middle of the night and cling to the walls so that the old floorboards wouldn't creak and steal granola bars and cans of food from the back of the cupboard and take them upstairs so that after the tiny meals Frank served him he would have something to eat.

He also learned how to get his mother to call home. The answer to that, of course, was getting in trouble. It started by accident, when he tried to skip school on his seventh birthday. Frank had found him hiding in the basement and sent him off to school with a black eye.

His mother called that night.

"James, your father called."

Jim launched into an explanation. "The boys at school were picking on me and I didn't want to go to school because I knew it would be worse because…" He didn't have to mention the Kelvin Memorial. She knew. "So I hid so I wouldn't have to go and sit through it all but then Frank found me and gave me a black eye and sent me to school and he wouldn't even listen please come home mom. Please."

"James." His mother's voice was tight, and he looked closer to see tears streaming down her face. "You need to stop getting into trouble, and this making up stories has to end."

"But-"

"Listen to your father, okay? Alright, talk soon."

That was it, the screen went dead and he was left staring into his own eyes in the dark reflection. "Love you." He said to his reflection, and then after a moment. "Happy birthday, Jim."

He didn't realize it until the next day, but that had been a birthday gift in itself – trouble would get him calls. So he got into trouble – it started with little things, but it grew quickly. He had to outdo himself each time he wanted to speak to his mother, which was better than not speaking to her, even if she was always mad, always crying, and never listened to him. He started getting into bigger fights, ditching school, purposefully getting caught cheating on tests that he could have taken in his sleep. This also had the side effect of making Frank early, something that gave him immense satisfaction, even if it did mean that he had more broken bones than he could count and the injuries were getting beyond what Frank's basic med kit could fix in one session.

Then Sam got a call on his birthday.

Neither of them expected it, and if the look on Frank's face was anything to go by, neither did he, but there she was, smiling at Sam like she saw him every day, like she was proud of him. Like she loved him.

Sam sat on his knees for an hour and half, basking in the glow of his mother's attention. He regaled her with tales from school and what had happened that day, and the cake that Frank had bought for him. She listened attentively to every detail, nodding and making the appropriate noises and actually asking questions.

Jim watched from the corner shocked, and not a little jealous. The flame of envy seemed to eat him up from the inside as he watched. It shouldn't have struck him as odd that she didn't ask about him, didn't ask to speak to him, but it hurt nonetheless. Eventually, he just stormed upstairs and sat in his bedroom against the door and pretended that he couldn't hear when Sam hung up the call, or when he and Frank sat down and ate the cake that Frank had bought. He especially pretended he couldn't hear the laughter.

Jim wanted that, wanted his mother's attention more than anything, and as he curled in on himself in his bedroom he found himself faced with a choice: continue to act up and get to hear his mother's voice once every few weeks, but she'd be upset with him, or act like Sam, behave himself, control himself, learn things to tell her about, and wait for his birthday in a few months to tell her about them.

He resolved to behave. If what he got was a call like what Sam had gotten, he would do it.

First he studied, a practice that started with his trying to avoid the fights that the boys at school tried to taunt him into by staying in at recess and lunch instead. He quickly found himself absorbed in his studies, especially as his teachers started giving him work that pushed him two grades above what his report card said. The longer he behaved, the more they let him work on his own while they taught the class, and he was surprised to find that pushing his mind actually felt good, until learning new things became something he looked forward to.

That was why he tracked down the school's French teacher even though he wasn't old enough to take French classes and begged her to set him up with a way to learn. She had found him in class the next week and given him an address and told him to write about himself in French and send it there. It was an old-fashioned address, the kind where real letters went, not PADD messages. Jim wrote his first letter that same evening and sent it off, leaving it in the old mailbox he wasn't actually sure still worked.

Sure enough, a few weeks later, a letter came back from Bernice, a girl who lived in France and liked the colour purple and making pastries avec her maman. Jim immediately threw himself into the practice of sending letters, telling Bernice all about himself and his life in Iowa. She was fascinated by the idea of a prairie, a 'yellow sea' as she called it, but seemed horrified that his maman was away in space without him, and that made him feel a little better.

She was the one who convinced him that he needed to learn to ride a bike, something he had been putting off since Jeremy had come to class in kindergarten with both his wrists broken from a biking accident. He didn't want to disappoint her since she'd been learning to draw blueprints like he'd suggested, so he begged Sam until he took him out onto the old highway. The dirt road was all but abandoned, and Sam pushed him along the length of it, picking him up when he fell, which was often. Jim couldn't help but beam at his brother and laugh. He wasn't sure how long it had been since he last laughed. But he couldn't help it – for a moment, it was like it was before Frank, when Sam was his best friend and his caretaker, when their mother let them run around and do whatever they wanted. Jim was so glad that Frank hadn't tried to stop them when they told him where they were going, that he had just laughed. He probably was counting on Jim getting injured.

Nevertheless, it was nice, and at the end of the day he wrote Bernice another letter, slipping a physical picture – and what he'd had to do to get the ladies at school to let him print it – into the envelope. The picture showed him on the bike, unsteady but riding it, and he knew that Bernice would appreciate it almost as much as she would appreciate that he had taken her advice.

In this way, seven year old Jim Kirk pulled his life together, gaining respect from teachers and students who only months ago labeled him as a simple troublemaker. He even tried to get along with Frank, even though that wasn't very successful, likely just as much because he man liked to leave his skin full of bruises as the fire of hatred that roared to life under Jim's skin every time the he saw the man.

Still, he kept his head down, behaved, listened to his step-father, did everything that Sam would have done and more, and counted down the days until his birthday.

On January 4th, he got through the Kelvin Memorial without a word, focusing so hard on the call from his mother that he barely heard anything they said. The glow of her upcoming call even got him through the boys laughing at him, mentioning his father, calling him miracle boy in their sing-song teasing. He raced through dinner, even the fact that Frank hadn't gotten him a cake unable to diminish his excitement, and then raced up to his room and sat in front of his little view screen, waiting for the call.

After ten minutes he picked up a book he was supposed to read for school – he might as well do something while he waited. The book was good, really good, and he found himself utterly absorbed until he reached the last page and closed it, only to realize that it was past midnight and she still hadn't called. Maybe her ship was on a strange time zone? Maybe she didn't know how late it was in Iowa? She was going to call.

Sam found him asleep there the next morning, shaking him awake before sending him off to school with a pitying look that made Jim's blood boil.

That day he broke records for bad behaviour, insulting everyone with words that Bernice had taught him, so thoroughly verbally destroying a novel that his language arts teacher cried, and sending two boys who decided to pick on him at recess to the school nurse. It wasn't surprising that Frank was waiting for him when he got home that night, and he found he didn't really care. Instead he just walked up to Frank, spat in his face, and allowed himself to be dragged into the house.

He was so used to the pain that he didn't even cry out anymore, disappearing into a part of himself that didn't feel anything as Frank hit him, harder and harder. Jim was spitting blood by the time the man stopped. The once-over Frank gave him with the med kit wasn't enough, Jim could feel it, but he didn't care. Instead he just stumbled up to his room and slammed the door behind him.

He was just in time for his mother's call.

His heart leapt as he pressed the answer button. "Mom!" Of course she was a day late – she was probably a day behind in space, probably hadn't even realized that it was the day after.

"James."

"I'm so glad you called!" He crowed, grinning at her. "I have so much to tell you! And please don't worry that it's the day after, I know you have a lot of work to do and it's very important and – mom?"

She was staring at him with an unreadable expression. Was he still bleeding? He raised a hand to his face to check, but no, there was no wetness anywhere, even his spit was back to clear.

"James."

He looked up at her, frowning.

"James, your father called to tell me you were getting into trouble at school again."

A heaviness seemed to drop onto his chest, and he struggled to breathe. Still, he forged ahead. "Mom, I've been dying to tell you – I broke the records at school for the highest marks in the grade ever! Isn't that amazing? And Sam finally taught me to ride a bike! We went up the old hill by the Gregson's farm and we-"

"James." She was trying not to cry, even Jim could see that. And she wasn't doing a very good job – even as he noticed, the first tear slid down her face. She was upset. Again. Just like every time she called. "Why can't you behave? I don't understand why-"

"But I don't always-"

"You need to listen to me, to your father."

The beginnings of anger bubbled in his belly and he looked at her again. "But I _have_ been –"

"I don't understand why you can't be more like Sam and just be a good kid, he's so smart Jim, and I know you are too. You could be winning awards just like him."

"But mom, I broke the-"

"And what did I say about making up stories? This is getting ridiculous."

"But mom, I-"

"At the very least you could be quiet and stay out of the way. Then the other boys will stop picking on you and you can stop making up this ridiculous shit about your father-"

"He's not my father! And I'm not making it up!"

"Just stop, James. You need to stop." She said, and then burst into tears, ending the call.

Jim sat in his seat, numb. So this was what she really thought of him. She didn't know about all of the good he had done, didn't really care either. What did she see when she looked at him? Sam said he looked like their dad, was that what she saw? Or did she just see the loss of him?

He raised a finger to touch the screen where she had just been and saw that his hand was shaking. Instead, he hit the button to turn it off and was faced with his reflection in the black screen. He was surprised to see tears running down his face, but when he reached up to touch his eyes he found the telling wetness there.

Footsteps came marching up the steps towards his room, and Jim knew just as clearly as he knew that the sun went down at night that it was Frank ready for round two. He didn't bother calling for help, just braced himself for what was coming. It couldn't hurt more than what had just happened anyway.

In the moments before the door opened, he felt a switch inside of him flip, a sudden all-encompassing apathy flooding his senses. He relaxed into it, welcomed it, let it take over. He didn't care anymore.


End file.
